The virtue on the board this month is Courage. The root of courage is ‘cor’, a Latin word that denotes the heart or the seat of feelings (http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/courage). The dictionary defines this word as making oneself do something that frightens one, that one does not usually do or want to do out of fear, but which one brings oneself to do with a gathering of force from within. Or it could be something that one does in the face of grief and pain, despite these. All in all, there is a call to exceed oneself.
The Mother has explained courage as an opposite force of fear, “Courage is the total absence of fear in any form”. If we were to look at all the words that make up this above explanation of fear, if we open ourselves to the key ideas that define courage, then we would find therein all it takes for that bud of courage to open, take flower into a resplendent, indomitable force. The phrase, “total absence of fear” lays the condition for the state of courage. It is that there should be no iota of fear in one’s being. Fear is said to be an impurity, “one of the greatest impurities” which we should take care to abolish from us, to not let any of it enter within the consciousness. Fear is an unpleasant and “crippling” emotion that is caused by the threat of pain, harm and danger (as in https://www.google.co.in/search?q=what+is+fear%3F&oq=what+is+fear%3F&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.2302j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8). It is crippling because, it does not let one move forward towards one’s goal, it holds one back. This holding back itself is a great cause of grieve in most of us, as experience would tell. Fear is a force, according to The Mother, that comes “most directly from the anti-divine forces which want destroy the divine action on earth;”
There is another clause to the definition and that is, “in any form” - the absence of fear in any form. This leaves us little room for any excuses to harbour fear, giving it any justification at all. All these require some scrutiny of one’s inner spaces, to look at the movements of resistances, refusals of opportunities for progress, or to overcome a weakness. Usually, beyond all these movements, some kind of fear, of losing one’s identity, of what one has gained so far; fear of failure and fear of pain and loss are usually there. Usually these are needless fears that arise out of our smaller, restricted selves. These are also movements that arise when we are not in our highest best, when we are given to lower movements of the being, when we open our doors for the darkness to cloud in and make obscure our vision. Fear makes us doubt our highest potential or our trust in the highest we can perceive at better times of illumination. However, once we know well the movements from within, once we understand these movements and offer them up, asking for a transformation of these, the unfailing help does come and we arise out of our small, narrow spaces into vast vistas of progress and growth.
As we know by now, this too takes time and effort from us. We need to want to rid ourselves of fear so that the force of courage can reign victorious within and lead us in life towards a greater purpose. The installation of courage in its rightful place within requires that one is “dauntless, and never indulge in that petty, small, feeble, nasty shrinking back upon oneself, which is fear”. Finally, may we all progress to state of integral courage, which means, “…whatever the domain, whatever the danger, the attitude remains the same – calm and assured.”
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